Given his background, what American Jewish leader Rabbi Henry
Siegman has to say about Israel’s founding in 1948 through the current
assault on Gaza may surprise you. From 1978 to 1994, Siegman served as
executive director of the American Jewish Congress, long described as
one of the nation’s “big three” Jewish organizations, along with the
American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League. Born in
Germany three years before the Nazis came to power in 1933, Siegman’s
family eventually moved to the United States. His father was a leader of
the European Zionist movement that pushed for the creation of a Jewish
state. In New York, Siegman studied the religion and was ordained as an
Orthodox Rabbi by Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, later becoming head of the
Synagogue Council of America. After his time at the American Jewish
Congress, Siegman became a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations. He now serves as president of the U.S./Middle East Project.
In the first of our two-part interview, Siegman discusses the assault on
Gaza; the myths surrounding Israel’s founding in 1948; and his own
background as a German-Jewish refugee who fled Nazi occupation to later
become a leading American Jewish voice; and now vocal critic of Israel’s
policies in the Occupied Territories.
"When one thinks that this is what is necessary for Israel to survive, that the Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter of innocents on a scale that we’re watching these days on television, that is really a profound, profound crisis — and should be a profound crisis in the thinking of all of us who were committed to the establishment of the state and to its success," Siegman says. Responding to Israel’s U.S.-backed claim that its assault on Gaza is necessary because no country would tolerate the rocket fire from militants in Gaza, Siegman says: "What undermines this principle, is that no country and no people would live the way that Gazans have been made to live … The question of the morality of Israel’s action depends, in the first instance on the question, couldn’t Israel be doing something [to prevent] this disaster that is playing out now, in terms of the destruction of human life? Couldn’t they have done something that did not require that cost? And the answer is, sure, they could have ended the occupation."
"When one thinks that this is what is necessary for Israel to survive, that the Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter of innocents on a scale that we’re watching these days on television, that is really a profound, profound crisis — and should be a profound crisis in the thinking of all of us who were committed to the establishment of the state and to its success," Siegman says. Responding to Israel’s U.S.-backed claim that its assault on Gaza is necessary because no country would tolerate the rocket fire from militants in Gaza, Siegman says: "What undermines this principle, is that no country and no people would live the way that Gazans have been made to live … The question of the morality of Israel’s action depends, in the first instance on the question, couldn’t Israel be doing something [to prevent] this disaster that is playing out now, in terms of the destruction of human life? Couldn’t they have done something that did not require that cost? And the answer is, sure, they could have ended the occupation."
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